Annaka Read online

  Praise for Annaka

  “Reading ANNAKA allowed my beliefs about what it means to be a young woman of African descent living in Nova Scotia to relax. Although parts of Annaka’s speech were unfamiliar, her imagination of and love for Clay was a comforting escape. The themes of confronting one’s self, working through inter-generational conflicts and secrets, and learning to trust and lean on friendships were very relatable. Annaka offers hope to the misfits of the world. Annaka’s relationship with Tia confirms that two women can rely on each other in difficult times, without malice. The pain that Annaka’s grandfather held onto speaks volumes of what it means to be the rock of the family, despite what one may have experienced. He did all of this with love and goodwill, which is a true reflection of many real-life grandparents. I was happy to see these nurturing dynamics. A huge thank you to Andre for this work of art that offers a pleasant escape with real-life takeaways.”

  –Jade H. Brooks, author of The Teen Sex Trade: My Story

  “ANNAKA has a fantastic hook (what if your imaginary friend from childhood came back just when you needed them the most?) but quickly evolves into a multi-layered exploration of what it means to seek belonging when you straddle many boundaries. Andre Fenton has crafted a wonderful and heartfelt love letter to childhood, memory, and the people and places that mean home.”

  –Tom Ryan, author of Keep This to Yourself

  “ANNAKA tackles two of life’s biggest challenges: death and adolescence. Fenton weaves together joy, grief, and discovery through the eyes of Annaka Brooks, a sixteen-year-old African Nova Scotian woman. The story brings to the forefront the achingly familiar feel of loss through a world tinged with magic. With characters and perspectives often left out of YA fiction, Fenton not only centres his characters’ community and history, he does it with both humour and heart.”

  –Rebecca Thomas, former Halifax Poet Laureate (2016–18)

  and author of I’m Finding My Talk

  Copyright © 2020, Andre Fenton

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission from the publisher, or, in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, permission from Access Copyright, 1 Yonge Street, Suite 1900, Toronto, Ontario M5E 1E5.

  Nimbus Publishing Limited

  3660 Strawberry Hill St, Halifax, NS, B3K 5A9

  (902) 455-4286 nimbus.ca

  Printed and bound in Canada

  NB1430

  Cover design: Jenn Embree

  Interior design: Heather Bryan

  Editor: Emily MacKinnon

  This story is a work of fiction. Names characters, incidents, and places, including organizations and institutions, either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Title: Annaka / Andre Fenton.

  Names: Fenton, Andre, 1995- author.

  Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20200160206 | Canadiana (ebook) 20200160257 | ISBN 9781771088923 (softcover) |

  ISBN 9781771088930 (HTML)

  Classification: LCC PS8611.E57 A76 2020 | DDC C813/.6—dc23

  Nimbus Publishing acknowledges the financial support for its publishing activities from the Government of Canada, the Canada Council for the Arts, and from the Province of Nova Scotia. We are pleased to work in partnership with the Province of Nova Scotia to develop and promote our creative industries for the benefit of all Nova Scotians.

  For those who feel grief

  For those accompanied by loss

  For those trying to heal

  This is for you.

  Chapter 1

  They say the first stage of grief is denial, and I speak from experience when I say that’s true. When I heard the news, I felt numb. Like someone unexpectedly hit the pause button on my feelings. I guess we always carry the expectation that the people we look up to will never die, but when they do you begin to realize how mortal the rest of us really are. When I heard about my grandfather, I was in the main office of my school. There had been a call waiting for me. It was Mom, and her voice was cracking but it was strong. It’s blurry, but I remember not being able to answer when she told me. I just sat there. Frozen.

  “Anna? Anna, can you hear me?” I heard Mom’s voice. She was in her minivan, on the way to pick me up.

  “I hear you,” I said quietly. “But I don’t want to believe it.”

  “Me neither, babe. I’m coming to get you. We have to head home.”

  Home. That’s a tough one.

  A couple of days later, Mom and I packed her minivan. We were heading to our hometown: Yarmouth. When we turned on to the highway I sunk into the passenger seat with earphones in both ears, trying to erase the fact that my grandfather’s funeral was the next day. You would think losing someone I shared some of my earliest memories with would cut deep, would make me want to cry or slam my fists on the van’s dashboard, but I still felt more numb than anything else. I felt anywhere but present, and being on that highway felt like existing in between fiction and reality, between Halifax and Yarmouth. I knew when we made it to Yarmouth, everything would hit. I had to face the fact that grief had made it home before I ever did. It had been ten years, and we were finally going home. I wanted to soak in that highway of ignorance for just a little longer. This was new territory for Mom and me; we let silence fill the air, not really knowing what to say or how to translate our feelings. I had never lost anyone before, but I guess that’s because I never really had too many people to lose.

  When I was a kid, my mom and I lived with my grandparents until I was seven, my Mom moved to Halifax and brought me along with her. Even though I’ve lived there for half my life, Halifax never really felt like home to me. Home was where the magic was, and Yarmouth was a place of magic for me. A place where my grandfather built me a tree house and I could stay up there all night looking at a sky illuminated by the stars. A sky that looked like it was full of freshly lit matches. In Halifax, they were always dying out.

  I had always wanted to return, but under the circumstances I was more fearful than anything else—fearful that the person who made Yarmouth magic was gone. There’d be no more giant hugs that kept me better grounded than gravity ever has. No more riding downtown in the passenger seat of Grampy’s antique truck, feeling the cool air of the summer breeze blowing in from the waterfront with him. Those moments always meant a lot to me, and now I had to come to terms with those moments only being memories.

  I began to drift off. Sitting in the passenger seat did that to me, but also Mom and I had spent the majority of the previous night prepping for our trip. She had told me that she didn’t know how long we would be gone for, but to “be prepared.” I didn’t know what that meant, so I brought a lot with me. We were in a minivan; we had the space.

  My earliest memories were all tinged with magic. Not that it amazed me, or anything. When you grow up around it you just sort of assume that’s the way life is. It’s not until you leave it behind that you realize it isn’t exactly normal. When I was a kid, my best friend was magic.

  Don’t freak out quite yet.

  He could cover the lake outside of my grandparents’ house with ice, even on a July day. How did he do it? I never knew, and didn’t question. I just remember my hand wrapped around his as the rest of the world just disappeared; the lake stayed, though, and we would skate beneath the stars. When I first met him, his hands were soft and grey, so I called him Clay. He came into my world as I drew him in my journal: two arms, two legs, and a lot of heart—but always too innocent. I knew I had to hide my imaginary friend away from the world.
He was both my best friend and best kept secret.

  Clay could recreate anything I wrote in my journal. It was almost like dreaming, but I was always wide awake. This wasn’t just any journal, either; it was the journal my grandfather gave me on my first day of grade primary. He told me that it used to be his, and now that I was starting school, he was passing it along to me. He was a teacher, and a big believer in writing journal entries. He drilled that into me as a kid, said it was important to keep track of ourselves. I got tired of it pretty quickly, and often let my imagination run wild in that thing. There were more drawings than entries, and that’s how Clay came about.

  I remember spending a lot of time with Clay in the tree house. Some nights we were accompanied by a summer breeze, other times we were surrounded by the fall’s red leaves. We shared some timeless moments up in that tree house, and there I was wishing those nostalgic moments would last forever. But one thing I have learned is that magic always finds an end. I want to say I grew out of it, but the truth is my mom and I left it behind.

  I wasn’t ready, and neither was Clay. I didn’t want to leave Grampy and Nan. My grandfather and I had a unique relationship—he was my first superhero, and the only father figure I ever had. I never met my father, but Grampy was always enough for me. Every Sunday we had our routine: I’d climb in his big red truck on the passenger side. He’d put it in drive, turn to me, and ask: “Are you ready, co-pilot?”

  I was sad to leave them behind. Mom told me I couldn’t stay, and I knew I couldn’t bring Clay along with us. What good would it do to bring him to a small city apartment where he couldn’t be seen? He was better off in Yarmouth—a safer place. So I left Clay behind with a promise. I promised him I would return that summer. Mom had said we would, and I looked forward to spending warm summer nights in the tree house with Clay, looking at the galaxy above our heads….

  But it turned out that wasn’t a promise I could keep, because we didn’t return. Mom, an artist, kept getting gig after gig after gig. After a while, I assumed Clay had taken the hint and moved on to somewhere else in the world.

  I still remember the last day I spoke to him. I told him I was moving away, but he could stay with grandparents as long as they didn’t see him. We had just finished playing hide-and-seek, our favourite game. He cried all afternoon. For ten years, the look on his face has stayed with me. Then Mom and I went off to a place that never quite felt like home.

  Yarmouth wasn’t exactly light years away from Halifax, so I don’t know why we never returned—or even visited. Mom didn’t speak about home too often. But there had to be a reason. Most summers Mom claimed to be stacked up with work, and didn’t trust that I was old enough to go alone.

  But back to Clay: I guess I always assumed that, with age, he just…went away like other kids’ imaginary friends. I was always told that my imagination would get the better of me, but I thought of Clay as the best part of me. The hardest part of all of this was knowing I didn’t keep my promise.

  “Anna,” Mom said, causing me to stir.

  I took out my earphones and shook my head. “Yeah, Mom?”

  “I know this is weird for both of us. But we need to talk about your grandmother.”

  This was a conversation I wanted to avoid. I sighed. “I know. You’re going to say that she might not remember me, right?” I was blunt. Better to get straight to the point.

  Mom didn’t reply right away. She kept her eyes on the road. She had kept strong since finding out that her father had passed. I think it didn’t feel real to her either. Or maybe she was just better at hiding it.

  “Yeah. That’s what I’m trying to get at,” she said quietly. “I just—I just don’t want you to get there and have your hopes up.”

  I had just found out that my grandfather had a heart attack in his driveway and died as soon as he got to the hospital. My hopes weren’t exactly high, but I replied, “I know. I’ll try not to.”

  I sunk back down into the passenger seat and shut my eyes again. I dreamt about a good day. A day when we sat on my grandparents’ porch as Nan braided my hair and Grampy was trying to blow away the smoke from his charcoal barbecue.

  “Why don’t you throw away that stupid thing and get a propane one already?” Nan asked him.

  Grampy tried to hide the smile on his face. He could certainly afford to upgrade, he just liked being stubborn.

  “If it works, it works,” he replied, taking a cloth to wipe his face.

  “Stubborn,” she said back. “Girl, I hope you aren’t half as stubborn as he is,” she said to me.

  “I hope she is! It’ll save her a lot of money for college.”

  Nan laughed at that.

  Then Mom came out the front door saying, “The smoke is getting all in the house! The next thing you know you’ll have the alarm going off.”

  “That’s what I’m trying to tell your daddy,” Nan said. “Soon enough we’ll be bunking up in the tree house with you, Annaka.”

  “Hey! There’s no room up there for all of us,” I pointed out.

  Nan and Grampy both let themselves go in a gentle laugh.

  Even if they were dysfunctional at times, they made me feel at home. I still remember one morning waking up to Grampy and Nan arguing outside. Grampy was keen on painting our house yellow, a bright alternative to our basic grey. Though Nan and Mom both wanted a baby blue, they talked about it for weeks, and eventually Grampy came around. He even said he had picked up the blue paint and was going to get started early in the morning. As the sun rose, I moved to my window to see Mom and Nan both looking speechless in front of a fresh coat of yellow paint on our home. I still laugh at the memory from time to time. As stubborn as he was, he was also a gentle man. He used to sing me lullabies, and would tell me the story about how he met Nan. He told me that he won her over on a dance floor with his moves. I would love to see it for myself. He was a gentle giant who showed his soft side. He wore his heart on his sleeves, but also rolled them up as he checked the closets for monsters. But after Clay came around, I told Grampy to leave the closet alone.

  “What if they aren’t mean monsters?” I would say. “What if they’re friendly?”

  My grandfather paused with a hand on the doorknob and I could hear a grin in his voice. “Your imagination gets the better of you.”

  “No, it is the best of me.”

  He let laughter fill his lungs and left my closet alone.

  Thinking back, maybe my imagination did get the better of me. When Grampy noticed all of the drawings in my journal, he showed me how to “properly” journal, according to him. He began having me write about my day each night before I went to bed. I wrote a lot about the time he and I spent together, and the adventures we got into. As an English teacher, this was his way of trying to get me to read and write at an early age. One time he had taken me on an adventure to Cape Forchu so I could write about it. Later on he peeked over my shoulder to see my doodles of his truck driving up the hill of Cape Forchu with the lighthouse sitting up top. I could tell it wasn’t what he expected, but he gave me a smile and a pat on the shoulder anyway. Maybe that’s how I was stubborn. I always wanted to do things my way—I must have learned that from him.

  I woke up as rain began pelting against the windows.

  “I thought you were my co-pilot,” Mom said as I stretched and yawned. “You hungry?”

  “Yeah, a little bit.”

  Mom nodded and turned off at the next exit and made her way to a burger joint drive-through.

  “What do you want?” she asked.

  “A cheeseburger with—”

  “I’ll get a cheeseburger, fries, and a large coffee,” she ordered on my behalf. Then she said to me: “I need you to stay awake with me, okay?”

  “Fine.” I shook myself awake. I guess the least I could do was keep Mom company on a three-hour drive.

  Mom gave the drive
-through employee a ten and told him to keep the change. I devoured the burger and fries immediately and sipped away at the coffee as Mom made her way back to the highway. Her body language was tense. Her hands tightly gripped the steering wheel, and I watched as her shoulders began to tighten up. I knew she was about to say something I wasn’t going to like.

  “I know our family has always been a tight unit. For a long time it’s only been you and me, and I thought we’d be returning to Yarmouth much sooner than this. I’m sorry that we didn’t. I really am.” She said all this without taking her eyes off the pavement.

  “Mom,” I cut in, “what are you getting at?”

  “I’m trying to say that I know you’re a sentimental person. I know who you are, Anna. I’m just worried about you right now. You loved Yarmouth, and I know you have wanted to return for a long time. But it might not be the place you remember, and we’re probably going to be there for a long time.”

  “How long is a long time?”

  “I don’t know yet.” Mom kept her eyes on the road.

  I let out a breath of air, and let worry fill my lungs. I wasn’t ready to go back home to bury Grampy, and I wasn’t ready for the possibility of Nan not remembering who I was.

  “Does she remember you?” I asked Mom.

  Mom’s eyes were still on the road and she didn’t answer right away.

  “When I called a few days ago, she asked me to bring my report card.”

  I took in a deep breath. Shit.

  “This is going to be hard, Anna. But we’re in it together, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  After a few more kilometres, Mom pulled over.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I want you to drive the rest of the way. Driving helps soothe the soul—trust me,” she said as she got out of the car.

  “You can’t be serious. I don’t know how to get to Yarmouth.”

  She was opening my door. “Easy. It’s a straight shot. Just stay on the highway until it ends. We’re more than halfway there.”